Pages

Monday, April 03, 2006

Audio Books on the Move

For the last few years I have found CD audio books to be a life saver when I driving long journeys. A nice 8 hour thriller makes a return trip to Manchester a pleasure rather than a chore. The good thing about using the CD in the car is that it always remembers where you where when you start the car again after a stop. I now want to repeat this trick with a mobile device so I can listen to books as I go for walks. I have downloaded loads of free audio book which are in MP3 format - however, I'm curious how other folks do it and what mobile device they may have chosen.

Firstly, the books are typically broken up into one MP3 file per chapter of a book. I know that many MP3 players default to shuffling the tracks. This may work nicely when your listening to tunes but may get a bit confusing when it is shuffling chapters. So how do you get it to play in order? Create a play list - seems a bit of a chore. Likewise, I don't want to add audio books into my music library - the last thing I need is a chapter of Frankenstein being read out in the middle of a party. So what do folks do? Install two different media players? (I use Media Monkey).

If anyone out their listens to mp3 based audio books on a little device I would love to hear how you are doing it and how successful it is.